


in the end

by ShowMeAHero



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentions of Suicide Attempt, Stanley Uris Lives, The Jade of the Orient (IT)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21540877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: Stan’s not really sure what to expect. After working everything out with Patty, having her catch him and cry with him and then send him to Derry with the promise that he’d come back alive, he’s pretty sure nothing can stop him. He’s still nervous, though, especially since he’s the first one there, nervously hovering near the hostess stand, trying to work up the nerve to ask if his friends (friends? former friends? childhood pals? the only people who truly understand him, outside Patty? all of the above?) are hidden somewhere inside or not.Eventually, he bites the bullet and goes up. “Hey, um… Is there a reservation for seven here? Under… um, probably Mike? Hanlon?”
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 37
Kudos: 583





	in the end

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from ["The Promise"](https://open.spotify.com/track/48p5E25cFPanxuwCTmTpuL?si=gMQ1tsbyRZuPijqg-sUerg) by When In Rome.

Stan’s not really sure what to expect. After working everything out with Patty, having her catch him and cry with him and then send him to Derry with the promise that he’d come back alive, he’s pretty sure nothing can stop him. He’s still nervous, though, especially since he’s the first one there, nervously hovering near the hostess stand, trying to work up the nerve to ask if his friends (friends? former friends? childhood pals? the only people who truly understand him, outside Patty? all of the above?) are hidden somewhere inside or not.

Eventually, he bites the bullet and goes up. “Hey, um… Is there a reservation for seven here? Under… um, probably Mike? Hanlon?”

“Yes,” the hostess says, crossing something off behind the stand. “Are you Mr. Hanlon?”

“No, sorry, I’m one of the other six,” Stan says. She motions for him to follow her to a back room, and he does.

“You’re the first one,” she says, which he’d figured. “I’ll send the others back. Feel free to settle in. Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Just water’s fine, thanks,” Stan says, and she leaves him alone. He looks over the room, taking in the seven empty chairs waiting for them all. After a beat of indecision, he doesn’t take any of them. Instead, he goes to the fish tank and watches a tiny clownfish swim in circles.

“Stan Uris,” someone’s voice says, and Stan turns to see Mike standing there. He laughs, and Stan laughs, too, at the wide grin on his face and the way all his memories start to slide into place looking at him.  _ Of course,  _ he thinks,  _ that’s Mike. Of course I know Mike. Of course I love Mike. _

“Mike,” he says, and they slam into each other, hugging each other so tightly Stan briefly thinks Mike will hoist him up off the ground.

“Getting s-started without m-me?” another voice asks. Stanley knows that can only be Bill, and Mike spins away from him to catch Bill in an embrace first. He  _ does  _ hoist Bill off the ground, nearly knocking him off his feet.

“I knew I could count on you two,” Mike insists, squeezing the life out of Bill. Bill huffs a laugh, patting him on the back. He makes eye contact with Stan over Mike’s shoulder, and Stan feels the same warm sensation he’d felt looking at Mike. Another soft, sighing  _ of course  _ that whispers through his veins like a breeze.

“We’re not late, are we?” someone says, and it’s a woman’s voice. Bill sees Beverly first, he can tell, because he’s scooping her up and swinging her around, laughing. Stan’s warm feeling is spreading through his limbs, like baking in the sun.

“Bev,” Stan laughs, and she goes to him next, hugging him so tightly Stan feels his ribs creak. He looks to the man who came in with her, and he’s… not sure. He can’t imagine it’s Eddie, from his height, or Richie, from his— Well, his everything.

_ “Ben?”  _ Bill asks incredulously. Stan’s grateful for his friend (friend? ex-friend? first crush? best friend? last friend?) and his persistent lack of a filter, even after so many years.

“The one and only,” Bev says, motioning to him. “I saw him in the parking lot and could hardly believe it.” She grins at him, such a sweet, private smile. “He’s changed a lot, hasn’t he?”

“You’re no less prettier,” Ben says, then flushes.  _ There’s Ben,  _ Stan thinks.  _ I know him, too.  _ “You’re even prettier now.”

“Ben,” she admonishes softly. She turns back to them, taking in the group she’s just spent two minutes hugging. “Wow. Where’s Richie and Eddie?”

“They both said they’d come,” Mike says. They can hear clattering outside the room, and Stan leans and cranes his neck to look around Ben to the door.

“Can we just get two extra chairs? Thanks,” Eddie says, as they’re rounding the corner. He sees Eddie first and breaks into a grin, because he looks  _ just  _ like he used to, just slightly taller, slightly more muscular, and with a dark beard now. Stan’s heart thumps hard in the next moment, when he notices there’s two kids behind him. He can’t help himself; he smiles, then starts to laugh.

“Look, Eddie had  _ kids,” _ Stan tells them. Everyone turns to see him in the doorway, and he grins at them all.

“Look at  _ you,”  _ he says, taking them in. Stan goes to him first, hugging him tightly before Bill shoves him off and takes his turn.

“Who’s this?” Bev asks, looking down at the two kids, a boy and a girl. The girl’s younger and the spitting fucking image of Eddie; she looks to be maybe thirteen, Stan thinks, and looking at her is jarring, because he can see so much of Eddie at her age in her. She’s got his thin face, his dark hair, his big worried eyes, his childhood freckles. The boy’s got a mess of hair pulled back, giant glasses covering most of his face, and a  _ dramatic  _ don’t-fucking-look-at-me aura about him, so Stan places him around fifteen years old.

Looking at him is kind of disorienting, too, because he also looks familiar but Stan can’t really place from where.

“This is Gracie,” Eddie says, hand over the girl’s head, and she waves. “And this is Jonah.”

“Hi,” Jonah says. Even his  _ voice  _ is familiar, but Stan really has no reason to have met this fifteen-year-old before.

Mike’s frowning. “You didn’t mention you had kids.”

Eddie frowns, too, then turns around. “Did you not— What the fuck, where’d Richie go?”

“He’s n-not here yet,” Bill says.

“What do you mean, where’d he  _ go?”  _ Bev asks, looking confused. “Did you see him?”

Eddie looks even  _ further  _ fucking confused by their questions. “What? Yeah, he drove us here.”

“Are you both staying at the same place?” Mike asks. Stan feels like he’s missing something crucial. Eddie’s looking at them like they’ve just started throwing food at him.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t we be?” he demands.

“Sorry, forgot my phone in the car,” Richie says, jogging in. He looks at the crowd of them and laughs loudly, clapping his hands together. “Fucking  _ look at you guys!  _ Holy  _ shit!” _

“Richie, Jesus Christ,” Eddie snaps.

“What? Nothing they haven’t heard before, living with your fucking filthy mouth,” Richie shoots back, before he’s running forward to swing Stan into his arms and around. Stan laughs, feeling whole for the first time in a long,  _ long  _ time. Richie puts him down and cups his face in his hands. “Oh, Stanley, I’ve missed you  _ so  _ much.”

“Did you remember me?” Stan asks, brow furrowing.

“No,” Richie says simply, “but I missed you.” He turns away and lays eyes on Beverly and shrieks. “Bev!  _ Fuck!  _ Look at you, you filled out  _ so  _ hot.”

“Beep, beep, Richie,” she says, but she’s laughing, and she hugs him back when he hoists her off the ground.

“You know about that, too?” Gracie asks. Stan looks back to her, then at her brother, and he’s struck again by how familiar he looks. Now that Richie’s back, though, the pieces are starting to slip into place. He’s hugged them all and fallen back to throw his arm around Gracie, like he knows her, and she leans into him, laughing.

That’s not what makes it click for Stan, though. What makes it click is seeing Richie and Jonah so close together, because now he can see it so,  _ so  _ clearly. Jonah’s face is the  _ exact  _ fucking same as a fifteen-year-old face Stan remembers vividly from 1991. He’s got Richie’s face. The last puzzle piece fits into place, and it’s their  _ eyes.  _ They’re  _ exactly  _ the same. Stan feels a strong pang of sentimentality.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Bev demands, as Stan notices Richie and Eddie both have wedding rings on. That’s pretty much the last straw.

“You two fucking got married, didn’t you?” Stan says. He doesn’t wait for an answer, because he already knows what the answer’s going to be. “Unbelievable. Of  _ course  _ you got married. You made us live through your fucking unbearable sexual tension for  _ years,  _ and then got married the fucking  _ second  _ we didn’t remember you and couldn’t reap the benefits, didn’t you?”

Richie looks sheepishly down at Eddie, then says, “Uhh— Actually, sort of?”

“You’re the  _ worst,”  _ Jonah hisses at his father. Richie looks almost proud of himself.

“I live to embarrass you, blueberry,” Richie says, and Jonah looks furious with him.

“I fucking  _ knew it,”  _ Bev exclaims. “I knew it,  _ I knew it,  _ I  _ called  _ it—”

“You did not  _ know it,”  _ Ben insists.

“I knew  _ some of it,”  _ Bev allows.

“We all knew s-s-some of it,” Bill says. He looks to Richie and Eddie. “Guys, what the f-fuck?”

“What, you wanted me to come out of the closet in fucking  _ Derry?  _ No fucking thanks,” Richie says. “That’s just asking to get drowned in the river.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Then, Stan says, “You could’ve told  _ us.” _

Richie laughs sheepishly, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Yeah, see, I didn’t want to tell you guys until I told Eddie, and if I told Eddie I was worried I’d tell him I’d been in love with him for, like, ever—”

_ “What?”  _ Bill demands.

“Old news,” Eddie snaps.

“—so I just… never said,” Richie finishes, like nobody had interrupted him.

“I was too scared,” Eddie says, simply. Like that’s all. To him, it seems to be, so that’s good enough for Stan. “Not anymore, though.”

Richie picks up Eddie’s hand and kisses the back of it dramatically. Eddie just rolls his eyes, and it’s so similar to how they’d been as kids that it just makes perfect sense. Of  _ course  _ Richie and Eddie got married. What else could they have possibly done?

“Explain yourselves,” Mike says, distracting them all.

“It’s not that long a story,” Eddie assures him, just as the hostess comes back with two additional chairs for Grace and Jonah, and they all crowd around the round table, making it to their seats, finally. Stan’s right next to Richie, and he can’t stop looking at Gracie and Jonah’s faces. It’s  _ jarring. _

“It happened after Eddie and I left,” Richie says, and Stan remembers the day vividly. He’d been one of the last ones to go, and his flight was the same day as Eddie’s, so he’d offered to carpool there with him. Stan and Mike, the only two left in Derry, had said their goodbyes to them on Eddie’s front lawn and watched them drive off to the airport, and that was the last time he’d seen either of them.

“I was about to get on my flight and I hear him just  _ screaming  _ my name, trying to get me to stop,” Eddie says, “like an idiot.”

Richie grins at him so fondly and so familiarly that Stan finds himself missing Patty by proxy.  _ “Your  _ idiot, legally.”

“Tragic.” Eddie looks back to the table. “I stopped and got out of line and he just— kissed me. And said he’d go anywhere I did.” Eddie’s face is all red, and he’s looking down at his plate, but his two kids look unbothered. Stan realizes they’ve probably heard the story a million times, because they grew up with Richie and Eddie, because  _ Richie and Eddie got married and had children. _

“I proposed, like, three weeks later,” Richie says. “And we moved to Chicago and— Well, ta-da, here we are now.”

“Richie’s famous now,” Mike says. Richie waves him off.

“So’s Mr. Denbrough,” Gracie comments. When everyone looks at her, she flushes red. “I’m sorry. I Googled you all.”

“That’s okay,” Bill says, leaning in to put his chin in his hands and smile at her. “Wh-What’d you find out?”

She looks almost shy, but she looks to Eddie, interestingly enough, and he nods almost imperceptibly back to the table. Gracie looks back to Bill and says, “You’re Bill Denbrough. I read one of your books for summer reading one year. You’re pretty good.”

Richie snorts a laugh as Bill says, “Th-Thank you, Gracie.”

“And you’re Beverly Marsh,” Gracie says, looking over at Bev. She looks even  _ more  _ embarrassed, now, and Stan’s heart goes out to her. Being thirteen and having to speak to strange adults was probably the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, Pennywise and his suicide attempt both included. “You’re a really— I just mean. You’re a really great designer.”

“Thanks, sweetie,” Bev says. Gracie looks like she wants to bolt from the table and also melt into her chair.

“You know, Gracie likes to draw, don’t you?” Richie says, leaning his head in his hand and grinning down at her.

_ “Dad,”  _ she whispers.

“Actually, Ben’s an architect now,” Mike tells her. She glances up at Ben, excited.

“Yeah?” she asks. “I found some articles about you, but I— I didn’t know how much you actually did.”

“I do most of it,” Ben tells her. “I have talented artists working with me.” He smiles at her, and Gracie smiles hesitantly back, then looks to her brother. She nudges him, and he mouths something Stan doesn’t catch at her before winking. Whatever it is makes her smile.

“And how about you, Jonah?” Stan asks. Jonah’s eyes snap up to his, looking like he got caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. “What do you like to do?”

“Uhh.” Jonah looks to Eddie, then to Richie. “Just— I don’t know. Track, I guess.”

“You  _ guess,”  _ Eddie says. He turns to Ben. “He’s the fastest kid I’ve ever fucking seen, myself included.”

“That means something,” Stan tells Jonah. “I remember seeing him run in high school. He was pretty good.”

“What, like my b-books?” Bill asks. Gracie flushes again, turning her face down towards Richie, but he just laughs and slings his arm around the back of her chair.

“He’s just teasing you, jellybean,” Richie whispers. “These are the people who made me so funny.”

“But you’re  _ not  _ funny,” Gracie whispers back, though less quietly. Richie snorts a laugh and kisses the top of her head before drawing away again.

“That’s my girl,” he says fondly. Gracie leans into his side, then looks up towards Stan. He looks away just in time to avoid eye contact with her, which he’s sure would’ve been mortifying, and instead locks eyes with Mike.

“I’m glad you came,” Mike says, after only a single beat of hesitation.

“Me, too,” Stan replies. They both smile and, after a moment, the weight of the moment settles back, and Stan almost says something about why they’re all there. Then, though, the waitress comes in and starts delivering food on their table, and Stan figures there’s time enough for that later. Right now, he’s sort of focused on figuring out what made Richie get his head out of his ass after eighteen years of pining, and what the fuck happens to Bill when he gets to writing the ends of his books; he wants to hear every ounce of knowledge that Mike has been storing in his head for decades without them, and he wants to watch Ben and Bev make eyes at each other like they did when they were kids. He just wants to be  _ with  _ them, and he’s so thrilled that he  _ can  _ be, that he was allowed to get this back.

Richie’s hand covers his after a while. He squeezes it, then pats it twice before releasing him.

“I’m so glad you came, Stan,” Richie tells him softly. “I wasn’t sure you would, but I’m— just so,  _ so  _ glad you did.”

Stan smiles at him. His eyes feel hot, and the back of his nose is prickling, but he just leans into Richie and wraps his arms around him from the side. Richie’s arm slings around him and yanks him in; he can feel Richie burying his face in his hair.

“Me, too, Richie,” Stan murmurs. Richie kisses the top of his head.

“Now, are you gonna eat that fucking wonton, or am I gonna have to do it?” Richie asks, stealing the aforementioned wonton out of Stan’s soup. Stan slaps him away, sending broth flying across the table and drenching several dishes as it does. Everyone jumps to their feet, shouting, and Richie laughs like a maniac, shouting, “I fucking missed you shitheads  _ so much!”  _ at the top of his lungs.

**Author's Note:**

> You can (and should!) talk to me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon)!


End file.
